iii. Vajpayee was the first non-Congress leader to serve India for a full five year term from 1999 to 2004.

NASA's Opportunity Rover completed 11 years of marathon on Mars

i. NASA's Opportunity Rover on Mars is the first human-made vehicle that has completed 11 years marathon in a record time.ii. It is the first time that a robot has exceeded the distance of a marathon on another world's surface.

iii. The robot which is accessed by solar power arrived at the
Mars' Eagle Crater in January 2004 and in these 11 years it completed
153-foot drive.

Reliance Communications acquires spectrum in 11 circles

i. Reliance Communications, part of the Anil Ambani-led group, has acquired new and top-up 800/850 MHz spectrum in 11 circles.

ii. The company with this acquisition, has become India’s first
and only operator with nationwide footprint of contiguous 800/850 MHz
spectrum.

iii. The company bought 900 MHz spectrum in Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh and won 1800 MHz spectrum in Odisha and northeast.

iv. It has re-acquired spectrum in 900 and 1800 bands in four of the seven 2G spectrum expiry circles.

KM Mani appointed as chairman of the Empowered Committee of State FM’S on GST

i. Kerala Finance Minister KM Mani was appointed as the Chairman
of the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers on Goods and
Services Tax (GST) by the Union Finance Ministry on 24 March 2015.

ii. The post was vacant since the former Jammu and Kashmir
(J&K) Finance Minister Abdul Rahim quit the position after the
defeat of National Conference in the J&K Assembly elections held in
December 2014.

iii. GST is intended to be implemented from 01 April 2016 as
announced by the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his 2015-16
budget speech. The Constitution (122nd Amendment) (GST) Bill, 2014 has
been pending in the Lok Sabha since December 2014.

i. Union Ministry of Railways has constituted a Committee to
review the existing Public Private Partnership (PPP) Cell in the Railway
Board with former IAS officer Ajay Shankar as its head.

ii. The Committee will recommend measures needed to make the PPP Cell more customer friendly, effective and result oriented.

iii. The Infrastructure Directorate of Railway Board will be the
Nodal Directorate for functioning of the Committee. While the Executive
Director/Traffic (PPP) Railway Board will be the Secretary to the
Committee.

Ruth Porat appointed as Chief Financial Officer of Google

i. Ruth Porat has been appointed as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of world’s largest search engine giant Google.ii. She will succeed Patrick Pichette who had announced his retirement on 10 March 2015 and assume charge on 26 May 2015.iii. As CFO of Google she will directly report to Larry Page, CEO and Co-Founder of Google.iv. Prior to this appointment Ruth was working as CFO at Morgan Stanley.